


Then the snow started falling

by Lestradesexwife



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: #MeToo, Dealing With Trauma, M/M, Steve Rogers Has PTSD, Steve has Twitter, dealing with the future, mentions of HYDRA, mentions of Terry Crews
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-30
Updated: 2018-05-30
Packaged: 2019-05-16 00:10:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,398
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14800563
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lestradesexwife/pseuds/Lestradesexwife
Summary: Post Black Panther/Civil War, in the lead up to Infinity War. I think I played a little fast and loose with the timeline but it is a bit challenging to figure out how our timeline molds to the MCU.Steve and Sam are on the road, staying in middle of the road hotels. Steve and the team use Twitter as a means of communication, and Steve pays attention to what is going on in the world.He develops an understanding of some modern issues, and realizes that there is a connection between things that happened to him in First Avenger and things that are happening now.And he learns a lot from #metoo





	1. Chapter 1

The future is great. 

He’d spent whole chunks of the War either entirely out of communication range or with only the briefest of radio contact possible. It wasn’t great, but it had given him a measure of freedom, the ability to make decisions in the field without having someone back at base hanging on his every word.

The future though. Need to know how to defuse a bomb? There’s probably a youtube tutorial for that… or at least a video connection to Shuri so she can walk you through it and you don’t die. 

And then there is the boredom. Being on the run from most of the governments in the world is, once the initial panic has eased off, incredibly boring. Thank god for Twitter, youtube videos of cats and skyping with Bucky.

Steve has Twitter. Because it is actually very easy to communicate with people in different parts of the world via Twitter, and if you are just DM’ing no one can see and if you keep it silly and don’t reveal your location or post selfies you can stay entirely anonymous. 

But both because he’s naturally curious and because it was apparently good tradecraft he’d followed some non-avengers accounts, and he posts about sports and pictures of dogs he’s met in parks. He’s got a persona built up online, so he doesn’t scream “RUSSIAN BOT” or “ACTUALLY CAPTAIN AMERICA” in his online interactions. Staying out of politics is increasingly difficult, and he has to content himself with getting into flame wars with people who try to tell celebrities to “stay in their lane.”

When #metoo hits he’s shocked. Partially because all the women in his life… well they are the women in his life, and more than capable of fending off any unwanted attention. But then there is a sensation, like a switch being flipped, or a piece fitting into a puzzle. They shouldn’t have to fend off anything. The fact that Nat can strangle a man with her garotte doesn’t negate her right to bodily autonomy. 

“Huh.”

He settles himself back against the headboard, yet another mostly nice business class hotel bed, in yet another nondescript part of the world, and starts to read through articles and blog posts about sexual violence.

The next morning at breakfast he’s reading about the woman in the photograph, the one everyone thinks is romantic but is actually a random sailor grabbing a random woman on the street and forcing himself on her, when Sam peeks over his shoulder.

“Whatcha reading?” Sam sits down with a bagel and a cup of coffee.

Steve frowns, unsure how to frame the answer. “There’s a lot of things that are different. Things that I want to blame on the future, but it was always that way only I never noticed.” He scrolls up to the picture at the beginning of the article. “This is sexual assault. But if I’d seen it, back then… or even now and just looked at it for a second I wouldn’t see what was wrong.”

Sam looks at the picture. “Yeah, that was in every text book in my history classes. Never really sat right in my head though.” He sits back and sips his coffee. “Man, you keep surprising me. I should know better by now.”

Steve quirks an eyebrow, feeling like he knows what Sam is going to say. “How’s that?”

“The textbooks failed to mention that you were a socialist with a penchant for taking down the government, and an innate understanding of intersectionality.” Sam drains the rest of his coffee. “Kinda wish you’d been around for McCarthyism.”

Steve snorts. “So do I.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Steve has opinions about #notallmen

He nearly snaps his phone in half when #notallmen pops up. Going briefly non-verbal. “How can they? ‘Oh well I’m a nice guy! How dare you tell me things that happened to you? Stop being mean to me!’ What the hell is the matter with people?”

Sam watches him pace back and forth, sprawled out on another motel bed. “I’d send myself back to the Raft to be able to put that up on Vine right now.”

Steve deflates, slumping down on the end of Sam’s bed. “I’m sorry, Sam.”

“Naw man, you wouldn’t be you if this shit didn’t piss you off. I’m just sorry we are stuck here and you can’t actually go knock some heads.”

“Yeah.”  
  
The next development has him staring at his phone, blinking owlishly.

Sam had made him watch Brooklyn Nine-Nine. Well, _made,_ they were working through the pop culture education of a popsicle in their copious downtime. He’d really liked the show, but found it hard to follow. They’d started marathoning it, and he’d gotten invested, but they’d been called out and he’d started watching other things and then they hadn’t picked it up again.

“What happened?” Sam, from across the table in a roadside diner. 

Steve had finished reading the article and had accidentally scrolled down into the comment section, which he should know by now not to do, so he scrolls up to the top and hands over the tablet to Sam.

Steve finishes his coffee and leaves the mug near the edge of the table for the waitress to refill when she comes around again. He’s not sure if he actually wants more of the engine grease they are passing off as caffeine but it feels normal, and he definitely wants to feel normal. Watching Sam’s face as he reads through the article he can tell that he’s not alone in being thrown by the revelation that someone had sexually abused Terry Crews. Part of his brain twists, his worldview rotating on an axis he didn’t know existed until this moment and the idea slides into place. “The problem isn’t the victim’s to solve, the whole system is rotten.” It gives him the same sort of sick feeling finding out Zola had been hiding Hydra inside Shield for 70 years. He’s just not sure how to _fix_ this, there’s no one for him to punch this time.

He chews on it, mulling it over for days before he brings it up with Sam. Because it was so long ago, and it didn’t really matter because it wasn’t like he’d felt… abused. And Howard had painted over the marks on the shield. When the paint chipped, it always seemed to be in those same spots first, like none of the other bullets that had hit it had _mattered._


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Steve talks about what happened to him during the war.

“Did I tell you about the time Peggy shot at me?”

“She did _what now?_ ”

“I had the shield, I asked her what she thought, and she just picked up a gun off the table. We were in Howard’s lab. Shot at me three or four times… well, shot at the shield, if she’d wanted to hit me she’d have hit me. She was as good of a shot as anyone I knew back then, even Bucky, maybe better with a handgun than Buck. Don’t tell him I said that.”

“Okay, but… she shot at you?”

“I’d never seen her that mad, before or since. We’d had a fight, I thought she and Howard.” Steve turns a fantastic shade of pink, mostly hidden by the beard. “I thought, because Howard was such a ladies’ man. It never really sunk in that she saw me, like that, so I was jealous because they’d gone for fondue. And she’d just walked in on Private Lorraine… well Pegs had walked in on Lorraine kissing me and she thought the worst of me.”

“Wait? Who?” Sam flicks on the turn signal, even though there is no one for miles behind them and pulls over to the shoulder of the road. “Margaret Carter, founder of Shield, shot you in Howard Stark’s lab. Because you kissed a Private?” 

“Lorraine kissed me. I was waitin’ on Peggy, and Lorraine grabbed me by the tie and dragged me behind some filing cabinets and laid one on me. Peg came around the corner and saw, well, and then I tried to tell her. But she said I was just like the rest and dropped me off with Howard.”

“And then she shot you.”

“At me, but yeah.”

“Dude, that is _messed up!_ ”

Steve frowns, mostly just a deepening crinkle between his eyebrows. “It, I mean I didn’t think about it at the time. Mostly I was just glad it wasn’t Phillips that found us. I could have… I mean I don’t think they would have kicked me out, but Phillips was always looking for a reason to bust me down a rank or two.”

“Man, she assaulted _you_!”

“Nah, I mean she just kissed me. Said she was thanking me on behalf of the wives of all the fellas I’d saved.” Steve blows out his breath, ducking his head, embarrassed that they are stopped on the side of the road in the middle of nowhere about a kiss that happened nearly eighty years ago. 

“Dude.” Sam looks away and when he looks back he’s in VA mode. “At best she took advantage of you. Did you want her to kiss you?” He doesn’t even really let Steve answer, just sees the flinch in Steve’s shoulders. “So if you didn’t consent, it is just like that sailor and the nurse. You can see that in other people… I don’t want to make you feel bad, none of what happened is your fault.”

“But I could have stopped it.”

“You shouldn’t have had to.”

Steve turns his head and looks out over the landscape. They are in the middle of nowhere in Arizona, and even though it isn’t flat it is still more sky then he’s used to being able to see and it makes him briefly dizzy. “Sometimes, I forget. When I was talking to her, I sorta sat down on the desk across from her. In my head, sometimes I’m still a kid with asthma and a bum ticker. And she was gorgeous, but no one ever looked at me like that. Even the USO girls, they treated me like… I feel like I knew the theory of how this body works, but in practice.” He shrugs, trying to deflect.

“Man, I could get out of this car and pull you over behind that cactus and do _unseemly_ things with you. The difference is, I wouldn’t drag you, or do them _to_ you. It doesn’t matter if you are Steve Rogers, Brooklyn’s angriest asthmatic; or Captain America, defender of truth, justice and the American way. You still have the right to make choices for yourself.”

“You wanna do unseemly things behind a cactus? Seems like a good way to get thorns in places there shouldn’t be thorns.” Steve’s got a flirty smile on his face that suggests he’s willing to risk the thorns.

“Oh my god. Do I have to call James? Have a shovel talk with him? Bullets are not signs of affection.”

“Bucky’s never shot at me!”

“No?” Sam’s eyebrows rise and then fall again. “I guess he hasn’t.” It had taken Sam awhile to forgive Bucky for putting Steve in the hospital. He’d only really been able to do it when he’d been part of the briefing on Bucky’s de-programming and Shuri had laid it all out. Watching James listen to it all with downcast eyes had broken something in Sam. He didn’t have to like what the Winter Soldier had done, didn’t need to forgive it either. He just needed to help James build himself back up. Sam blinked, bringing himself back to the problem at hand.

“Jesus.” It is so complicated, trying to reconcile the Steve that does so well in the modern world, who hides his confusion and discomfort from everyone. Steve hates being othered, hates being reminded that he’s an outsider (although that had improved slightly when James had come out of cryo in Wakanda and started his rehab.) Steve seems to think if he ignores it hard enough he will just push through and suddenly the 21st will make perfect sense to him. The curious part of Sam wants to push Steve into explaining _how_ he’s coping with the changes. The morbid part of him knows that an unhealthy portion of Steve’s coping revolves around picking fights with the remains of Hydra, or neo-nazi Hydra wannabes.

Sam has to admit it is pretty funny watching the white-supremacist assholes when Captain America shows up to give them a stern lecture about tolerance and respect with his African American sidekick/boyfriend watching his six. Even more fun when the lecture falls on deaf ears and Sam gets to kick some ass. It isn’t the most glamourous work, since they are still sorta-mostly fugitives, but it needs doing, Hydra being Hydra it will be work for the ages. 

“Maybe we could go to Wakanda? Tend some goats and talk to some elders? Couldn’t do us any harm, you…” He doesn’t get any further, even though he can see Steve closing down anyway and knows it is a lost cause. He’s cut off but the blare of a siren, the terrifying ringtone of the burner phone Steve had sent to Tony when this all started. 

Steve nearly jumps out of his skin at the sound, impossibly loud in the quiet of the car. But he turns the startled motion into a quick search of his pockets, before twisting to reach into the back seat to grab his jacket and pull the phone from the inside pocket.

“Tony?!” Sam can almost hear through the tiny speaker, but the murmured voice sounds nothing like he’d expect. “Bruce! What happened? Who?” Steve’s holding the phone against his ear tight. “Where’s Vision? Okay. We are on our way to the quinjet. We can meet you in 18 hours. The compound. It will be okay Bruce, we’ll get him back.”

Sam has already started the car, throwing it into gear and leaving a spray of gravel behind as he barrels towards the non-descript portion of desert where they parked the jet. 

“What happened?”

“Aliens. Why is it always aliens in New York? They’ve got Tony, the Parker kid and some guy named Strange. Bruce came back to warn us, apparently they are going after Vision next.”

Sam doesn’t need to be told, he just checks the rearview and presses the gas pedal deeper into the floorboards, so much for tending goats in Wakanda.


End file.
